What do You think about The Toilers Of The Sea (2002)?
Of the three Victor Hugo novels most readily available in the U.S., The Toilers of the Sea is the least well-known and the one that Hollywood and Broadway have not transformed into pop culture hits. Set in the Channel Islands, where Hugo was exiled for a time, it recounts the heroic story of a local man who risks all the little he has, including his life, to rescue the engines of a shipwrecked steamer and win the hand of the steamer’s owner’s niece. Because it is Hugo there is much description and explanatory text of the channel, the islands, the weather, tides, sailing and the newly invented steamboats, the history and culture of these partly English, partly French islands, the making of revolvers, and the various sea creatures that play a role in the novel’s plot. These supportive essay-like chapters are almost always interesting, though they sometimes result is some funny transitions when Hugo begins a chapter that resumes his narrative as if the conversation he was picking up again was separated from its start by a few pages, not ninety. A friend of mine says that Hugo may be the smartest writer he has ever read and I think he might be right. If not the smartest, he is the most curious and generous in sharing what his curiosity nets in clear and precise prose. But the narrative (perhaps half the book, maybe a hair less) is compelling, an insightful examination of human nature with characters of great depth if somewhat monolithic nature (Gilliatt, Lethierry, his niece, the young minister are good; Rantaine and a few others are not just rogues but pure evil). Hugo is fascinated by extremes and the pressures and dilemmas they create for others. Despite the black and white nature of the characters, consequences are complex and have less than predictable results, which makes the reading rewarding. So does Hugo’s prose: “The scar of human work can be seen on the work of God.” “The dream world is the aquarium of the night.” “Facts are a rising tide.” “The human heart is a practiced spy.” “Nothing is more inept than integrity under threat from the law.” “Any number is zero when compared to infinity.” There are countless examples of such sharp, fertile observations. And the sustained descriptions are equally startling in their clarity and power. Hugo is one of the elite of the masters of world literature.
—Rick
You hear that? The earth just shook a little because Ernest Hemingway, after vomiting on himself, shook his fist in disgust as one more reader found The Toilers of the Sea. Victor Hugo, the modern era's poet philosopher, ponders Man's relationship with nature. He musters every ounce of his romantic emotion and universal sooth-saying while still dictating precise details regarding the actions, jargon and sciences of the cultural entity in the Norman archipelago. But, of course, a social dissentor like Hugo can't ignore the naggging urge to satirically bash superstitious nonsense and ignorant judgements rampant through the towns on Guernsey and Jersey. Neither can he ignore another ever-present urge to execute long-winded diatribes about his setting. Alas, as with Hemingway, one endures tortures in order to experience the feeling of ethereal satisfaction upon closing their book. Because Hugo wrote The Toilers of the Sea while in exile on the Channel, I thought his ideas about the conflict between man and nature might resemble the social conflicts between man and society. As I progressed through the book, I felt Hugo's hand paternally patting my shoulder as if to say, "It would have been a nice idea, but let's go a little deeper." And deeper we went.My perspective on Man's role and place within nature broadened immensely as I read about Gilliatt's struggles in the Douvre reef as he attempts to save the engines from the successful sea merchants innovative steam ship, the Durande. Symbolically, of course, the steam ship, like any other industrial development, stands as an afront to nature and, as Hugo so sarcastically insinuats, to God. In saving the engines from a ruined Durande, held captive in the Douvre rocks, battered by nature, Man asserts his dominance over nature, even when it volleys its harshest artilery at him. But something actually bothers me about Hugo's story. I found his personification of nature, his description of the sea and her power, embittered with human emotions like a formidable foe on a battlefield, excessive and tiresome. Hemingway high-five. Yet this distaste, to my surprise, led me down a path which Hugo may or may not have intended. At first, I noticed how Gilliatt derived meaning for his own life and struggles from viewing nature as a personified entity. Do men really struggle against nature, or themselves? Perhaps this perspective on nature derives from an emotional or conditional projection of ones own existence, therefore injecting value into one's ego. We view nature as an adversary because it bolsters our sense of cosmic importance, much like actual wars, which we wage oftentimes for principle, would solidy our place in a civilization and add credence to our ways of life. But then I wondered how Gilliatt could curse nature but subsist on its bounty for survival simultaneously. Why chastise a rock as a malicious adversary, part of a sea trying to destroy him, then watch that same sea indifferently smash and batter that same rock? Then I finally wondered why, at the end of it all, Gilliatt did not display any pride, any triumphant celebrations. What did he learn? What does he know now that I do not? Hugo revealed his philosophy on Man's relationship with nature - not against nature, not versus nature. As in so many other cases, especially with God, Man thinks of his foe only when he notices it blocking his own profit or prosperity. We think of ourselves at odds with nature only when the storm comes. We feel a peace, a happiness, even, I daresay, a unity with nature when Spring comes, the flowers bloom, the scented breeze sooths and the trees shade. Can we exist united with nature in these cases but then sever the treaty when the storm comes? Or ought we to be like the rock and endure the pleasant and the storm in the same fashion? Similary, Mess Lethierry, the Durande's owner who rises to immense profits and, after the shipwreck, dives into deep depressions and social ruin, must weather the calm and the storm. His daughter, who must marry one man while loving another, must endure such a calamity as she endured the bliss of riches and innocence before coming of age.But, again, what did Gilliatt learn? Why did he not return home as a triumphant war hero, happy in his newfound valued ego? Hugo will not tell us, but one might infer it from Gilliatt's actions - another Hemingway high-five. Without disclosing the final events of the novel, consider whether man himself exists as a benign part of the natural cycle. Man need not fight nature, except in his own ignorant egoism, but at a high level of understanding knows that, like nature, he is responsible to bring the calm, raise the flowers and provide the shade for others while enduring the destructive powers which the same nature brings. Man can end the storms in others' lives. He can endure the violence of the tempest and act out the beauty of Eden. He needs not stop one any more than the other. He exists as a part of the cycle, ready to pass on as easily as promote the well-being of his fellow man. Man ebbs and flows with nature no matter the contrary efforts and arguments for which he toils. He enjoys the ethereal quality of creation while respecting the power of destruction - embracing life and death both in their might and beauty. He cannot alter either and in fighting one he severs himself from the other in an ignorant display of fical egoism, benefitting only to himself, and loses before his adversary ever breaks a sweat.
—Ben
Our life seems to stand on the precipice of an isolated island divided as it is by a great sea that separates us from knowing the course of our destiny. To live is to toil this sea---to swim blindfolded upon the great expanse of its infinite waters that incessantly make us work hard to bridge the gap between our life and the fulfillment of our destiny...The sea is symbolically strewn in the novel as the immutable rough path that we should all undertake without much choice. It is Victor Hugo's overwhelming representation of nature's ubiquitous presence against man, depicting with such lucidity its unpredictable proclivities as governed by an Unfathomable Power that is set above and against the veritable limitations and fragility of human life. Hence, making us all in Hugo's descriptive prowess eternally bound to this scheming and grandiose spell, always at the risk of peril to survive as we all become like Gilliatt, before meeting our death---its eternal slumber and subsequent peace as The Toilers of the Sea.This consequential restrictions of man against the invincibility of nature is the main thematic element of the novel, depicting man's continuous journey towards hope despite the sequential aftermath of despair and isolation that seem to naturally follow as invoked by man's sheer struggles and experiences with the unpredictability of nature, concentrating on its predatory instinct that seems to be imbued to all creatures that purposely appear not in accordance to what is aesthetically good, but more so with its malevolent alter ego and evil twin counterpart that darkens any form of hope with its hazardous form of violent destruction.Like Jean Valjean in Les Misérables, Gilliatt's character is honed with a golden heart of unselfish kindness, a radiating character of will and love in spite of being castrated from society, submerging himself in his own self-imposed isolation, appearing similar to the island of his own upbringing as Guernsey in his time seems to embrace its own solitude in the lonely sea of the Channel Islands.This veritable goodness on the part of Gilliatt though appearing to be quite peculiar at first glance as if bound to be out of place from the midst of the novel's evolving harsh environment, has a spark of unique differentiation in himself with transcendental qualities that result from his sheer detachment from society, filling him in his loneliness and solitude with profound meditative awe that provides an understanding of something, which in turn could not be articulated, but could only be reciprocated by the goodness of one's heart, setting him apart from the mere narrow-mindedness and deceit of the unthinking rest and yet, Gilliatt in spite of his humble self gifted with super human strength still succumbs to the weakness of his own heart at the end of the novel, a testament of beauty and love, of a good and kind man not spared even by fate, destined to perish from a life that is filled with untoward tribulations and eventful surprises.Somehow, Gilliatt has become Hugo's bait to the tumultuous sea, swallowed up whole to its very depths of uncertainty. With his true love for Déruchette crushed and burned, his only hope has turned into a sacrificial offering. With Gilliatt, Hugo demonstrated the cruelty of destiny that even to the very best of men, immunity is not given, not even in the form of a blessing as destiny incoherently strikes without much differentiation from what is good and from what is evil. ☾☯
—☽ Moon Rose ☯
